Sonic 3 Level Select - "The Easy Way"?

I have no idea, but I'm not about ruin my cart trying it.

 

Oh, this is old, to me. :P I saw it somewhere on Gamewinners back around 2002 or 2003. It is pretty neat, and it does work.

 

That's old news. It works because both Sonic 2 and 3 use the same RAM address for the level select.

Personally, I just hook into the vblank and have a trained ROM for that purpose. =P

 

I learned how to do this from my cousin years ago, but I did it when Sonic 2 was already on the level select, both do the same thing.

Of course, that has the nasty side effect of randomly wiping you Save RAM

 

It's never done that to me, funny thing, I just did that exact thing this morning, lost my S&K cart and wanted to get debug and have a run through Ice cap XD

 

Yes, this is old news. But I don't know why it happens.

 

Yes, it does work. I did it until my copy of Sonic 3 stopped working... =P

 

Using the S2 level select sets a RAM byte so the game knows if it is active or not. S3 also uses the exact same RAM byte for the level select. Pressing start on the sound test resets the game without clearing the RAM variables, so by changing the cartridges and doing that, you are loading up the S3 cartridge with all the S2 variables still set, which will result in the level select remaining enabled.

 

I never got it working... I just got the endless music note that dragged on forever, and a blue screen. =P

Then I decided to try the button press way and I got it. =P

 

Yup, this is very old. I did it waaay back when I was a kid.

 

This isn't the easy way! The easy ways to hack it in(I did that)

 

Yeah, this is the only way I was ever able to get level select in S3... I had fun using the makeshift Super Tails. =P (with the S monitor, hehe)

 

I've always managed to do it the proper button press way. I just seem to press the buttons in time to the music and it works. Dunno if that's how it was intended, but since it works I'm not complaining.

 

I risked the cart swapping when I borrowed Sonic 2 + 3 off friends back in the day Something told me to enable the level select in Sonic 2 and to try to Cartridge swap and see if it worked for Sonic 3 seeing as the level selects looked so similar and of course it worked for the reasons StephenUK mentioned.

On Sonic Mega Collection Plus on PS2 I got the S3 level select cheat to work just once... but thankfully I saved the game onto my memory card with it enabled!!

DJ

 

You can simulate this in emulators by just loading a Sonic 2 savestate with any code enabled into Sonic 3, then soft-resetting.

 

I tried that too when I 1st started to run Genesis Emulators and found it worked the same way which was cool. If I recall also Debug mode also works the same way for S3 from an S2 savestate.

DJ

 

I had downloaded a S3 level select savestate from S2B I believe, but it was in PAL. So I tried to perform the code myself. I did it on the 3rd try. Now I can't seem to do it again.